Exhibition review- Basquiat X Warhol
This raises interesting questions about the idea of style, and of authoriality. Of course this is a question Warhol engaged with throughout his career, the works produced at the Factory challenging the same notion,
(Silence)
it has the potential to simultaneously feed and stifle my own creativity. Stifle it, because looking at the work of incredibly talented, radical and groundbreaking artists- whatever their field- can be very humbling, awe inspiring but also paralysing; It may also somehow feed it, not least because it has impacted how I think of creativity
A silent scream- Munch in Orsay
Life, love and death do feature in all of his works: From haunted portraits, to scenes of domestic dramas, from images of vampire women, and melancholic depictions of disease and death, Munch is an obsessive painter, returning again and again to the same ideas, the same motifs. There is something irresistibly human in his grappling with love and death. His work is urgent, existential, intense.
Exhibition review: A second of eternity
Next onto installations: in one room, a perpetually playing piano looks like it is played by an invisible man, while helium balloons float and dance through the room, in Philippe Parreno’s “My room is a fishbowl”. Some balloons, probably recently added, hang close to the ceiling, out of reach and out of bonds while some have dropped close to the floor
The poetic of printing
This is something that I have been trying to take into my own creative practice. Thankfully, this has not meant that I have restarted writing poetry- some things are best left behind! But I am trying to make more conscious decisions over not just the content of my work, but the form as well.
And everything else is literature…
And my own practice feeds on all of these art forms in different ways. The more narrative mediums, like novels or films, feed the stories of my imagination, and certain song lyrics do too. The imaginary landscapes and stories in my mind were all kindled in the universes of others and the stories they tell.
But there is something else…
A light in the darkness
In the face of everything going on, normal life can feel completely superficial, an oblivious denial of the horror of war, a smokescreen of normality that masks the gaping wounds of a world in turmoil.
Goodbye 2021!
From an art point of view, I also think I have a lot to thank my lucky stars for so here are a few of my highlights and how I hope 2022 might develop:
Firstly looking back at my own practice, 2021 was the year of new media. I
Is Art a con?
This tongue in cheek title- and this blog post overall- was prompted by a documentary I watched recently on Netflix called “Made you look”, about an real-life case of Art fraud, which cost collectors in New York over $80m. The blurb states: “A woman walks into a New York gallery with a cache of unknown masterworks. Thus begins a story of art world greed, willfulness and a high-stakes con.”
A day in Orsay
Set in a former train station, the space itself is striking enough to warrant a visit: the museum opens onto a large gallery of statues under the huge glass ceiling, with smaller galleries and enfilades of rooms on the sides of the building.